Select Local Merchants

Seaplane Tours uses a fleet of Cessna 206s to whisk flightless sightseers into the sky enabling them to view Miami's perpetual realness from a rarely seen vantage point. Settle in with up to three of your closest friends for a 15-minute Miami-area sky tour and marvel at the breathtaking scenery of downtown Miami, South Beach, Star Island, and Fisher Island. Each passenger will soar equipped with a personal viewing window and headset to speak with the pilot or pretend to be working at the world's first airborne drive-thru.

Burgeoning artists grasp colorful bouquets of used packaging and crumpled paper as they gather in the 1,200-square-foot studio. Karla Caprali stands in the center, explaining composition and balance as students mold their castoff items into freestanding sculptures. Similar displays of inventive creation characterize the Art Academy at Caprali Studio, where owner and artist Karla limits the size of each of her classes, allowing her to shower students with the proper amount of encouragement and constructive critiques. Karla maintains her class sizes even when instruction spills out into her studio backyard, where pupils breathe in open air as they hone woodworking skills, orchestrate large-scale installations, or quickly sketch a cloud shaped like a fruit bowl.
Karla brings knowledge accrued at a university in São Paulo to each course and draws from influences including the impressionists, Salvador Dali, Dorothea Tanning, and the whimsical film sets of Georges Méliès. Her emphasis on developing new approaches to art has helped students in portfolio-preparation courses earn admission to Pratt, SVA, and other prestigious schools without having to defeat Monet's ghost in Pictionary. The instructor also worked to help found the Falls Arts District, which launches bimonthly art walks to 15 privately owned galleries. On such nights, Karla clears her studio space to put students' work on display alongside her own paintings and installations, and transforms the ample backyard into an outdoor gallery bathed in the glow of decorative lights and vocal reviews from local owls.

At sunrise and sunset, the space over Florida’s white beaches and turquoise waters transforms into a brilliant skyscape of color. Luckily for their customers, Go Fly Tours has access to the ideal vantage point for viewing this prismatic wonder—the sky itself. Its airplane tours can soar through the enchanting scenes of dawns and dusks, or showcase local landmarks, such as bustling Port Everglades, Hollywood Beach, and Star Island, a favored getaway for celebrities. The staff can also add a romantic touch to the aerial views with a champagne toast, which has proved more appealing than a pilot who makes kissing sounds the whole flight.

The Patricia and Philip Frost Museum has spent most of its life outgrowing its digs. It debuted in 1949 as a children's museum, which took off quickly and soon expanded into the Museum of Science and Natural History in 1952. In 1960, it again needed more space and moved to its current site, and now an even larger space is being built, set to open in 2016.
But throughout all its physical changes, its mission remains the same, "We inspire people of all ages and cultures to enjoy science and technology, in order to better understand ourselves and our world."
Size: as of now, the site stands at 48,000 square feet; plans for the new space will expand that to 250,000 square feet over five levels
Eye Catcher: tour the Wildlife Center, where the staffers care for injured wildlife?specifically majestic birds of prey?and release them back into the wild
Permanent Mainstay: the Planetarium, where PBS's Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer was filmed, boasts a 65-foot-diameter domed projection screen
Don't Miss: in the late afternoon, the planetarium hosts Legends of the Night Sky Laser Show, which teaches kids how to find constellations using lasers and Greek myths
Hands-On Experiments: in Nano, kids manipulate large-scale mechanisms as they familiarize themselves with the principles behind nanoscience
Special Programs: the museum?s Sea Lab features beautiful underwater creatures and coral reefs. Guests can get up close and personal as they reach out to touch a starfish or a sea urchin or have a cleaner shrimp nibble at their nails

As they observe the vibrant exhibits of aquatic life inside the Miami Seaquarium, many guests don't realize that they are also walking through a movie set. In the onsite lagoon, bottlenose dolphins swim through waters once traversed by Flipper, who filmed several television episodes and films at the venue. This aspect of the Seaquarium?along with its many conservation efforts, educational programs, and shows?underscores a united commitment to wildlife consciousness. Special opportunities, such as the dolphin encounter, also send people on underwater treks through the reef display, letting them swim with seals or giving them the chance to shake a dolphin's hand.
It's hard to pinpoint the biggest personality at Miami Seaquarium, but Lolita the killer whale?who performs daily alongside pacific white-sided dolphins?claims the title of heaviest, period. On the other end of the scale, macaws and cockatoos perch around the Tropical Wings section of the park, and endangered sea turtles lounge at Discovery Bay. Elsewhere, a watery playground and three-story ropes course keep legs from growing too wobbly after a trip to Shark Channel) or a smooch from a sea lion.

The Gold Coast Railroad Museum began in 1956, when train enthusiast William J. Godfrey chanced upon the miles of abandoned railroad track snaking through the pineland of University of Miami’s southern campus. He imported a newly retired steam engine to the premises, and a tribute to railroading history began.
Now in a new location in Miami proper, the museum continues to honor trains’ role in American history, with nine exhibits on locomotives, passenger cars, and the Richmond’s Naval Air Station’s fleet. Visitors can hop aboard a full-size diesel locomotive passenger coach, or take a ride a miniature children’s railroad that’s ideal for transporting shipments of Lincoln logs. Alternatively, they can run motorized or free-wheeling trains through a model railroad, which zips through mountain tunnels and circles around to-scale landscapes.